Explore the vast range of titles available.

PurposeThe purpose of this viewpoint is to examine the claims made in the resignation letter and global petition surrounding the mass resignation of editorial members from the journal Gender, Work and Organization. It aims to shed light on the overlooked voices that criticized the boycott and to reflect on how the protest, while addressing legitimate concerns, inadvertently marginalized early-career and minoritized scholars, undermining principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted a reflexive methodology, engaging with a globally diverse set of junior, mid-career and senior scholars to gather their insights on the unfolding events. By intentionally seeking out those critical of the resignation, the authors emphasized their positionality as scholars committed to fostering inclusivity and fairness. They positioned themselves against the instrumentalization of social justice rhetoric, critiquing how it disproportionately impacted vulnerable academic communities.FindingsThe viewpoint highlights how the mass resignation and academic boycott of Gender, Work and Organization failed to account for its adverse effects on early-career and marginalized scholars, missing opportunities for feminist care and solidarity. It argues that the boycott, while signalling virtue, had a polarizing impact and overlooked key principles of EDI, leading to unintended negative consequences.Originality/valueThe originality of this viewpoint lies in its focus on the often-unheard voices of scholars who opposed the mass resignation and academic boycott of Gender, Work and Organization, offering a counter-narrative to the widely publicized protest. Its value comes from critically examining how actions intended to promote social justice and equality can inadvertently harm early-career and marginalized scholars. By spotlighting these complexities and challenging the virtue signalling behind the boycott, the critique contributes to ongoing discussions on the ethical responsibilities of academic activism, solidarity and inclusivity in feminist scholarship.

Israel Studies experiences today one of the rare moments that we might call a paradigm shift for an entire discipline. The first major paradigm shift for this still young academic field occurred in the late 1980s and in the 1990s with the rise of the so-called \"New Historians.\" The opening of archives forty years after Israel's War of Independence and the gaining of distance from the events themselves, led a younger generation of historians, sociologists, and political scientists to question some of the long-standing truths in the academic field. The challenges almost forty years later are of a different nature. Then, Israel faced a struggle about the interpretation of its birth, and the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians. The atrocities of Oct 7, 2023, marked the darkest hour of Israel's history so far. The brutal Hamas attack had taken Israel's political and military leadership by surprise and shaken Israel's society in its very core. What came after it marked the greatest challenge to Israel's moral compass and to its image in the world.

In 2019, the journal put out a special issue on what it called \"Word Crimes.\" The articles in the issue harshly criticized representations of Israel in North American academia as uninformed, monolithic, and malevolent. At the time, Penslar was a member of this journal's editorial board, and he was unhappy about both the nature of the articles, many of which he believed to be crude and polemical, and the fact that the journal's editorial board had not been consulted about the issue in advance. He resigned from its editorial board, and many others on the board followed. Yet here he is, six years later, writing for the journal from which he had walked away. Why? He makes no claims that his essay is a work of scholarship. It is an observational essay, which echoes some of the ideas enunciated in the \"word crimes\" issue of 2019. He believes that neither is true. He writes trusting that the editor gained editorial board approval for this collection of brief essays and that he will not present mine as anything other than what it is.

The field of Israel Studies has been an important academic gathering place for scholars, largely but not exclusively in the humanities and social sciences, who share a scholarly passion for and scientific interest in investigating the multiple dimensions of Israel--its culture, history, politics and society to name but a few. Israel Studies, the flagship journal of the field for the past three decades, has accurately reflected this diversity of interests, and the methodological pluralism that necessarily comes with such diversity, by publishing a wide variety of scholarship that engages with Israel. In this regard, Israel Studies, both the field and the journal, is not unlike other area studies that have a focus on the exclusive study of national identities, states or regions of the world, e.g. Italian Studies, Iranian Studies, Middle East Studies, Slavic Studies, and others. All area studies share a common fascination with what is unique and singular about their field of study, and Israel Studies is no exception.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) has expanded rapidly though controversially in the United States in the last five years. The academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions is a key component of this movement. What is this boycott? Why does it make sense? And why is this an American Studies issue? In this short essential book, Sunaina Maira addresses these key questions. Boycott! situates the academic boycott in the broader history of boycotts in the United States as well as in Palestine and shows how it has evolved into a transnational social movement that has spurred profound intellectual and political shifts. It explores the movement’s implications for antiracist, feminist, queer, and academic labor organizing and examines the boycott in the context of debates about Palestine, Zionism, race, rights-based politics, academic freedom, decolonization, and neoliberal capitalism.

The goal of this forum is to garner attention to the issues surrounding the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions () campaign against Israel, to help a broad audience better understand the complexity of , and to engage geographers in the debate. Including the editorial introduction, seven different experts on the issues of Palestine/ Israel have written six essays on for this forum. The six essays represent a wide range of opinions while also echoing some similar themes.

Freedom of speech and academic freedom are widely recognized prerequisites for the maintenance of national and international freedom to communicate with colleagues in the relentless, objective, scholarly pursuit of knowledge and the advancement of the human condition. The debate on freedom of speech and academic freedom at universities in South Africa is complicated by the cultural and ideological diversity that characterizes a society in which racial discrimination has been entrenched for so long (Benatar The Lancet 335, 1576- 1578 1990a ). It is perhaps not surprising that in this context the ‘language’ used does not necessarily have the same meaning to all the participants in the debate. These differences in ‘realms of discourse’ which seem to threaten freedom of speech and academic freedom are in part a reflection of the different ideologies from which they arise and also highlight the challenge to universities in South Africa to become ‘Africanized’. This essay is an attempt to analyze and discuss some of the overt, covert and intertwined strands of thought and the different ‘realms of discourse’, woven into the debate on academic freedom (and academic boycott) with a view to identifying, and briefly describing, the various concepts which influence and determine differing positions and which in part derive from diametrically opposed ideological value systems. The complexity of the issues involved precludes provision of comprehensive arguments for or from each position. I shall endeavor to sketch the basis for conflicting opinions, and illustrate that the difficulty in reaching consensus on ‘rational’ grounds is hampered by the contrasting basic value systems from which reasoned debates may proceed. Without recognition and acknowledgement of these fundamental differences, it is difficult to understand discussions in which the same words are used to describe different concepts and values, or to embark on the de-alienation and negotiation processes required to peacefully reach compromise solutions to the complex challenges facing society and universities in South Africa.